Tag Archives: Sustainable

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During my time living in Copenhagen I was a member of an organic local veggie association. Every week I used to go pick up my “dose” of vegetables taking with me a canvas bag, filling it up with potatoes, tomatoes, onions, garlic, salad, beetroots – and again a lot of potatoes, beetroots, potatoes, beetroots, potatoes, beetroots… well, that’s what they eat over there :).

Although we are not lacking similar veggie group purchasing in Italy (es. Cortilia in Milan), I didn’t get the chance to become a member of any of those yet. But I think today I will take action against it, as I was completely shocked at seeing the enormous amount of plastic is used in packaging in supermarkets. I mean, I knew it before… but today I looked down to the cart and…

It kind of hurt my eyes…

And my heart. Think about how much petroleum, processing energy, CO2 emissions, transportation costs, toxins and mould on our food we can save, just by avoiding packaged fruits & vegetables.

Next time you are at the grocery store… Think about this post. Let’s make a change together!

“Sorry if we used plastic for packaging, but please do recycle it” – What?! Are you kidding me? Of course I will recycle it.

That’s the least I could do, but you, dear producer, should just stop filling up my house, my fridge and my cabinets of it. You and I, we both deserve to nurture ourselves – and leave on a cleaner, healthier Planet.

How to describe a student-driven university department that is responsible for managing Maastricht University’s sustainability portfolio in not more than 20 words? Thank you Lukas.

Founded a couple of years ago, the Green Office has been awarded several times for the quality of its operations and commitment to the sustainability cause- Among the projects: green electricity, pc power management, the sustainable vending machine, Green Office academy and more.

DID YOU KNOW…. ? Rice husk is considered a toxic waste. In Italy, China and Estern countries there is a lot of it because of rice crops. Vipot is an innovative patent that can reuse it in a healthy and useful way.

“A real Italian miracle”. That’s how the press defined the global success of Med in Italy, the very first Italian hyper-sustainable house. The project involved a team of students and architects from the Universties of Rome and Trento, which worked on it for over a year in collaboration with some of the best Italian firms in the field of innovative building industry.

The name evokes the Mediterranean nature of the house, which has been designed for warm climates and as a response to global warming. The layering of the walls, containing sand in aluminum tubes and coatings of natural isolation made with wooden wool, ensure thermal balance, while the heating is provided by solar panels, which produce three times the energy consumed by the house.

The “Mediterranean house” can be assembled impressively quickly: five days are enough to put together the 50 square meter structure, plus five more days for the installation and the testing of the systems. Which is why this house is a perfect solution in case of emergency (i.e. earthquakes) as well as an affordable alternative to traditional building methods.

Med in Italy won the third prize in the general ranking at the Solar Decathlon Europe competition in Madrid, and the first prize for Sustainability, concerning the environmental impact of the house in its “lifetime”. The low-impact of Med in Italy has been further confirmed by its transportation: the house has been carried from Italy to Spain and back by rail transport, thus sparing around five tons of CO2.

Although it’s not on the market yet, Med in Italy will soon be a real alternative and an attractive novelty for green architecture in Italy and abroad.

Ecoagriculture.org has started gathering info, knowledge, opinions and suggestions from farmers and some of the players involved in agricultural sector interested in sustainability. They started collecting contributions from all over the world and by accident it was me editing the one coming from Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition.

DID YOU KNOW… ? Using ecosan (ecological sanitation) a family of four people saves up to 160 liters of water per day and avoid polluting 480 liters of washing water (laundry, showers…), making its treatment process much more easier.

Amazing story about two women who backpacked around the world, shared the same passions, finally put their experience into a fashion output. For every girl loving traveling therefore, knowing what a hindrance excessive weight is!